The Civil War - I'm Clueless

[Lachdonin]

The Empire has only EVER taken control through force. Argueing that the situation is different now is absurd.

 

As for Cyrodiil's weakness, we know nothing of the condition of Cyrodiil right now. All we know is that they are unwilling to direct more than a token force to Skyrim, which is why the Legion is recruiting locally. For all we know, the Empire is readying an invasion of Elswyr and Valenwood and doesn't want to draw attention to it. Saying Cyrodiil is weak is just asking for innane arguement based on nothing more than conjecture and opinion. I could say the province is half under the control of the Sload, and theres just as much (IE none) proof to support that as Cyrodiil's weakness.

 

You also have the problem that two Provinces, Highrock and Skyrim, have a very bad tendancy for infighting amongst the various city-states. Balgruf himself says the old ways involved constant assassinations and war between the Jarls, and the city-states of Highrock are at eachothers throats almost as much as they are at peace. Neither present a particularly unified nation, and its that infighting that made them easy to subsume into the Empire.

 

The only Provinces which have, in the past, proven unified enough to throw off imperialistic expansion are Morrowind, Blackmarsh and Summerset. Well, now Morrowind is virturally oblitterated, Blackmarsh is independant, and Summerset is the enemy. If history is any indication, Skyrim and Daggerfall, if they stood against the Domminion alone, wouldn't last long. all the Elves have to do is wait for them to fight amongst themselves, which probably wouldn't take long.

[BCbrad]

the situation, as i understand it: (note all of the following is roughly remembered and may not be 100% accurate)

 

The thalmor are a political party that have taken power of both the high elves and wood elves, forming them into an alliance called the Aldmeri Dominion

 

the Aldmeri Dominion invades the Empire, which is a complete rout and results in the signing of the White Gold Concordat, a treaty which basically reads "we own you".

 

Skyrim is, up until now, an imperial province. However, one of the core conditions of the treaty is that the empire bans the worship of Talos, the Ninth Divine. This is because unlike the other 8, talos is a human hero who somehow ascended to divinity. The elves believe this is impossible, and thus any worship of him is harshly punished.

 

Talos worship is prominent in skyrim, where he is known as Ysgramor, because in life, he was a Nord. So the nords take the outlawing of talos very hard.

 

 

Believing (rightly) that the empire is a puppet state, and that being part of it is no longer in skyrim's best interests, Ulfric stormcloak starts a rebellion. One of his main acts in doing this is killing the King of skyrim, who he views as a weak puppet. The stormcloak account of this is that he challenged the king to an honorable duel in Nord tradition, and won. The Empire/thalmor viewpoint is that he murdered the king.

 

I would estimate the percentage of the popultion that supports the revolt is more like 50-60%, they seem to be generally in favor. however, about 60% of skyrim's towns are empire controlled, basically the entire western side of the map. Stormcloaks control the east. Both factions are, theoretically, engaged in war for skyrim, although in practice the war is somewhat inactive and at a stalemate. at least until you come along.

 

Ulfric Stormcloak's aims are, in no particular order:

-To take solitude, and depose the surviving wife of the dead king

-to overthrow and replace any jarls that support the empire

-to drive imperial influence out of skyrim entirely

-to be crowned high king of skyrim, with windhelm as his capital

-To invade the empire, and annihilate the thalmor.

Don't forget that Talos worship is forbidden! Unthinkable!

[falseblackbear]

I would estimate the percentage of the popultion that supports the revolt is more like 50-60%

I would say more like 70-75% are in favor of the empire.

Solitude's inhabitants are almost 100% for the empire, some are indifferent(no clear stormcloak supporters, hence Ulfric leaving Elisif on the throne if he takes over)

Morthal's inhabitants are indifferent.

Markarth's inhabitants (not counting forsworn) are about 80% for the empire, 10% indifferent and 10% stormcloak

Whiterun is about 60-30 in favor of the empire with 10% being indifferent

Falkreath is 80% indifferent, with 10% empire and 10% stormcloak

Riften is 70% indifferent, with 15% both pro and anti empire

Dawnstar is around 40% for, 30% against, and 30% indifferent

Winterhold is indifferent

Windhelm is actually about 50% stormcloak and 40% empire, with the Dunmer strongly supporting the empire along with some Nords, along with the 10% indifference

[Feanoro]

Did you actually talk to every npc about it and tabulated the results? Actually are you even able to ask this question of everyone? And if so, did you take the city's guards into account? If the question is not available for an npc, it should not be counted as indifferent automatically. You need to explain your methodology more.

 

Cause for example for Markarth, we KNOW that the Silver-Bloods control everything and almost everyone including the guards. And we also know they are STRONGLY in favor of the Stormcloaks (Thonar gets made Jarl by Ulfric if you side with the Stormcloaks and the Silver-Bloods keep complaining about not having enough of a voice under Igmund's pro-Empire leadership). So where the heck did you come up with Markarth 80% in favor of the Empire? That number's completely ridiculous.

 

Also we need to take into account that we might not be seeing a complete picture of the population of a city. Windhelm, for example, supposedly the oldest city in Skyrim, former capital, current capital of the Stormcloak rebellion, etc. should supposedly be something like 80+% in favor of Ulfric. Yet not only does that not appear to be true of the citizens you DO see in Windhelm, but I suspect despite the so-called extreme racism of the Stormcloaks and Nords, the ratio of non-Nords to Nords in Windhelm might be higher than 1.

 

Also if you take into account the docks technically outside of Windhelm you should also factor in the stables around each city.

 

Anyway, the idea is that at the outset the Stormcloak Rebellion is pretty small. However, once you conquered some cities you'll find that not all of the Ulfric/Stormcloak detractors remain that way (think of Beirand in Solitude).

[Lachdonin]

Anyway, the idea is that at the outset the Stormcloak Rebellion is pretty small. However, once you conquered some cities you'll find that not all of the Ulfric/Stormcloak detractors remain that way (think of Beirand in Solitude).

 

 

Beirand is a bad example of that, since he clearly states he is a Solitude man through and through. He doesn't care about either the Empire or Stormcloaks, but will stand with whoever Solitude supports.

 

Which i think is more the case with most of the population. The Holds are essentially fiefdoms, each ruled over by a 'king' (Jarl) who manage their own internal interests. The Jarls determine where the Hold stands on the Stormcloak/Empire deal, not the general population. The majority of people are going to stand with their Jarl, regardless of where he stands, simply because their livelyhood depends on their Jarl. Look at the Silver workers in Markarth, for example. Even when the city is 'loyal' to the Empire, you can complete a minor task by getting the Silversmith to let up on the workers. When you preach to him about hard hours and human decency his reponce is "Enough already,You sound just like those Legionaires".

 

The general masses don't care too much about the civil war, their loyal to their Holds, not the Stormcloaks or the Empire.

 

Of course, this lack of a cohesive unity in the province is just more proof to me that Skyrim would never be able to properly unite against any extrenal threat (We all know who i mean) without the Empire...

[Feanoro]

No it's not, it means that the Jarls need to be united for Skyrim to be united. You could also achieve the same result by replacing the Jarls who don't like you with loyal Jarls and fast forward in time a few years. The people will still be dependent on and loyal to their Jarl and city except that city now supports you.

 

But anyway, I'm getting bored with the repetitiveness of this argument. All I can say is I'm convinced that an independent Skyrim can hack it if it's given a bit of time to coalesce and that I like the Stormcloaks, whom I find more complex than some people would have you believe. When I did the imperial side I was just left with an empty feeling at the end. Admittedly most of that is due to poor writing of the end by Bethesda but still it seemed like all I achieved was help secure in place a collar on the throat of a proud nation. With the Stormcloak victory there's this hint of hope, progress and belief in Nord strength that can conquer.

[falseblackbear]

Also if you take into account the docks technically outside of Windhelm you should also factor in the stables around each city.

I did, those at the docks and stables were generally indifferent.

Did you actually talk to every npc about it and tabulated the results? Actually are you even able to ask this question of everyone? And if so, did you take the city's guards into account? If the question is not available for an npc, it should not be counted as indifferent automatically. You need to explain your methodology more.

I completed 2 playthroughs of the civil war quest, one stormcloak and one imperial. I talked to almost all of the NPC's before and after (not all of them, I didn't go scouring the ratway to find a non-hostile beggar to talk to) , and I didn't count the guards, since they are sworn to obey the Jarl, and will take the Jarl's side no matter what.

I basically talked to the NPC's, and if they didn't have an in-depth dialog I looked at either their actions or I cycled through their responses until I got something that at least hinted at who they supported. For example, in Dawnstar, the original Jarl is pro-stormcloak, but on the other hand you have the former legionnaire and that lady who later becomes Jarl. The boss of one of the mines is stormcloak, the other is imperial, and I believe one of the shopkeepers is imperial, and the rest are indifferent, hence the small margin of superior imperial support. As for total support across the entire province i estimated. I'm not going to calculate every non-hostile npc and calculate it out, i just don't have the time, let alone the interest, to do so.

I classified indifferent as either not having a definite support for either side or not even mentioning the war, seeing as how if they actually cared they would at least mention the war.

And we also know they are STRONGLY in favor of the Stormcloaks (Thonar gets made Jarl by Ulfric if you side with the Stormcloaks and the Silver-Bloods keep complaining about not having enough of a voice under Igmund's pro-Empire leadership). So where the heck did you come up with Markarth 80% in favor of the Empire? That number's completely ridiculous.

Let me start off by saying that the Silver-Bloods don't believe in anything but money and power. They just want to seize as many opportunities as possible to gain as much power as possible. I can just imagine Thonar playing sycophant to Galmar as victorious Stormcloaks enter the city, all to become Jarl. Therefore, I counted the Silver-Bloods as indifferent. The number is compiled from the rest of the citizens, almost all of whom voice support for the empire except a few, including that guy in understone keep who is angry about the hall of the dead situation

Also we need to take into account that we might not be seeing a complete picture of the population of a city.

I really don't think this is the case. Bethesda is almost religious about inhabiting every single one of the buildings in cities with an NPC. They did it in the Fallout series, and they did it here as well. Personally, I would be thrilled if they enlarged the cities with a couple hundred buildings and the villages with a dozen buildings just to give the APPEARENCE of a populated settlement. They could just mark the doors "inaccessible" and not even program an interior, just at least make it looke like someone lives there. I mean, for the central trading hub of the entire province Whiterun is a little underwhelming with a total NPC population of im guessing 40, maybe 50(not including guards). When the bandits outnumber the civilian population, you know you have a problem.

[thesapien]

That's an interesting question. What is the supposed population of Whiterun? While playing, I assume everything in game is just a short version of what is supposed to be the case. It's like how fighting isn't supposed to be exactly as it looks. So the number of houses and people, I had always assumed, wasn't perfectly correlated to the numbers shown in game. To me, it's a great design choice so that they don't have to create what will ultimately still be a slimmed down version but with just more facades of places you can't enter or seeing people in places that you can't talk to. BioWare does this latter method but isn't as opened world. For Skyrim, the former methods feels more app.

[falseblackbear]

I think that it's preferable to at least give the appearence of a populated city. All of the cities are really small, and if you really want every building to be populated, just program a bunch of buildings, give them a generic interior, and make the inhabitant npc's called "citizen" and have a dialog rotation just like the guards(without the arrow in the knee of course)